The current legislative project aiming to modernise the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure will have far reaching consequences for how criminal law is organised and therefore has implications for the criminal law practice. A large implication is the changing role of the criminal judge. As the judge traditionally has an important role to play with regard to truth finding and legal protection, this raises the question what the legislative project means for this role and whether complete and balanced truth finding and legal protection are sufficiently guaranteed. This article provides answer to this question and offers some recommendations.

The continuous integration of the Internet in societal daily life leads to an array of new communication methods, including the Darkweb. This hidden form of the Internet (which enables much more anonymity due to several encryption techniques) seems to be used for a lot of criminal enterprise. Also in the planning phase of crimes, the Darkweb seems to play an important role. Nevertheless, research on this phenomenon is quite scarce. In the present study, a sample of 198 threads (i.e. discussion topics) was analyzed via a quantitative content analysis, after which an exploratory study was conducted to highlight patterns and structures of communications on the Darkweb. The results show that different types of Darkweb users (e.g. sellers, rookie users, etc.) vary clearly in their communication activities and the crimes that they communicate about (e.g. malware, drugs).

In a recent letter to parliament, the Dutch minister of Security and Justice announced a revision of the regulations concerning the use of force by members of the Dutch police. The police had requested such a revision, because they believe that the current regulations are not up-to-date and lead to an unacceptable criminalization of officers who have used force while on duty. The changes announced in the letter are the introduction of a new criminal offence, the introduction of a new defense type (specifically for police officers) and various changes in procedural law. This article critically examines several of these changes.